Ironman Switzerland-Triathlon - August

There wasn't a category for Triathlon as such, so hopefully here will do.

Triathlon isn't one of the most popular sports in exsitence, but it is becoming more and more popular and is a well established Olympic Sport. Triathlon, as the name suggests, consists of three sports which are swimming, cycling and running. Each racer must compete each discipline whilst trying to be faster than their competitors.

The first leg ...
...might not seem like a long distance when you consider how far people run in races, but I can imagine having to swim that far would be pretty difficult!! The swim normally takes place in a natural river, which adds to the difficulty. Luckily the competitors wear wetsuits so they aren't going to freeze to death!! It takes the runners around 20 minutes to do the swim, but obviously depends upon the conditions.

Once you're out the water ... more

There wasn't a category for Triathlon as such, so hopefully here will do.

Triathlon isn't one of the most popular sports in exsitence, but it is becoming more and more popular and is a well established Olympic Sport. Triathlon, as the name suggests, consists of three sports which are swimming, cycling and running. Each racer must compete each discipline whilst trying to be faster than their competitors.

The first leg of the triathlon consists of a 1500m swim. Now that might not seem like a long distance when you consider how far people run in races, but I can imagine having to swim that far would be pretty difficult!! The swim normally takes place in a natural river, which adds to the difficulty. Luckily the competitors wear wetsuits so they aren't going to freeze to death!! It takes the runners around 20 minutes to do the swim, but obviously depends upon the conditions.

Once you're out the water it's a mad dash to run to your bike, remove your wet suit and get cycling as fast as you can. The bike ride is 40Km, whcih is actually rather a long way (for me anyway). The quality of cycling is very high, resembling very much the professional cycling such as the Tour De France. 40Km would take me an awful long time to cycle, but these guys manage to push through it in around an hour.

The running section is only (!!!) 10Km long, and normally takes about half an hour to complete. This is in the same style as a marathon.

So there you have it, after roughly 1 hour 50 minutes, and 50.5Km of running, swimming and cycling you get to have a rest. Me, I doubt I could do 20 minutes!!

Of course you have to be good at all three events so to do well you're going to need to be good at all three, but in reality there are going to be experts at each of the three disciplines, who can gain an advantage from their best event. This means some people may get in to the lead on the swimming stage but be caught in the runnning. Different triathlons may have particulary hard sections, such as a difficult cycling section. This could mean it will favour the good cyclists, or a hard run that favours the good runners. All this makes for quite exciting racing, often going right down to the last stages of the run.

The chances are that most of us will never run a triathlon, so our experience of it is limited to what we see on TV. It isn't on TV very often. Except during the Olympics the only real opportunity you have to see a triathlon is the odd time it is on Eurosport, but even this is not a regular thing.

It is quite a fun sport to watch, although I am sure a lot of people will say otherwise. It all depends what you like. I fyou enjoy watching athletics, cycling and swimming then this will be for you. Not only does it combine the events, but adds a whole new level of competition by having them run one after another.

Because there are competitions at every level from beginner to world champion as long as you're reasonably good you'll be able to compete!! Only if you're fit.

I think it is bound to get more popular!! 

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